


The Road to Purgatory is Paved with Blood and Stuff

by Haelblazer



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s08e19 Taxi Driver, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Not Serious, Purgatory, Season/Series 06, Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-16 00:19:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11242335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haelblazer/pseuds/Haelblazer
Summary: One does not simply walk into Purgatory, even if one is a rogue reaper.





	1. Chapter 1

“Shocker, Sammy, a demon lied.” Dean leaned back against the reaper’s taxi, arms crossed, trying not to look like all of his hopes had been riding on a scrap of suspect intel from a tortured out crossroads demon.

Sam ran a hand through his hair, frustrated that they’d been making so much progress only to hit this wall.

“Look…” Ajay started, but seemed unable to finish the thought. He was as twitchy as he’d been from the minute that Sam and Dean approached him, but they chalked that up to the riskiness of his business rather than his reliability. At least in Dean’s experience, reapers had proven themselves more honest than most angels, and definitely more so than any demon.

“Please,” Sam didn’t bother to hide how much he was clinging to the hope that Ajay could help them. “Anything you can do.”

Ajay shook his head, but it wasn’t a denial—it was a gesture of disbelief at the idea of taking this risk. “It wasn’t a lie; we’ve got ways in and out of Hell, the Veil, Heaven. The thing is, it’s one thing smuggling souls in and out of Heaven and Hell, but strolling into Hell with a Winchester? It’s not just risky, it’s insanity…” he sighed, “At best, and I mean AT BEST, you can an escort to a backdoor, but even that would require getting you into purgatory first.”

“You can do that?” Sam asked, looking as confused as Dean felt.

“What, just pop you into purgatory? Do you realize what it takes to even locate purgatory, never mind _accessing_ it? Specialized reapers bring souls there—you think I’d need to go rogue with this smuggling gig if I had power like that? The only reason I even know about the backdoor to Hell is because I’ve seen through the door from the Hell side of it.”

“Say we’d already located purgatory,” Dean felt that indescribable pull whenever he thought about his time in purgatory—about being there again, “Maybe even have people who know the lay of the land. Where can we find one of these specialized reapers?”

“You can’t,” Ajay replied, as if it were a simple fact.

“Yeah well, history says otherwise.” Dean’s words took on the bold smugness that usually meant he was both annoyed and trying to boost his own falling morale. “We kind of know how to summon and trap a reaper.”

Ajay was the one who looked confused now, “They escort Eve’s creatures to the afterlife; there’s no reason for them to become visible to humans. Maybe you summon one, maybe even rig some kind of a signal to let you know it’s trapped, but that’s it.”

Sam considered this new information for a moment before coming to a conclusion, “So in order to see the reaper, we need a dying monster?”

“Yes, but I doubt that they’d be in the most cooperative mood,” Ajay looked around, nervous about being seen—he’d been talking to the Winchesters for too long already. Sam and Dean looked at each other, both silently considering their next steps.

“You let us worry about that part,” Dean spoke up first; Sam still looked contemplative. “But just so we have all our bases covered, how about you tell us what you know about that backdoor?”

~

“So, backdoor to Hell,” Dean kept his eyes on the road as he drove them out of Kansas City, from Missouri, into Kansas. They were on the 70 headed toward Lawrence. They’d have to turn right back around into Missouri to check up on Kevin, but they were too close to home to miss out on a chance to visit Missouri (the woman, not the state). “I’m thinking we go with a classic: Dr. Visyak, some virgin blood, and the next lunar eclipse.”

“I don’t know,” Sam looked uncertain, “The last time that ritual almost killed her.”

“Yeah, but that was probably all the torture.”

Sam looked at Dean with what Dean would have called a bitchface and what Sam would have called a slight frown.

Dean pretended to cough, “I mean, Cas and Crowley weren’t exactly playing nice.”

“Anyway…” Sam scrolled through a lunar calendar on his phone, “The next lunar eclipse is in…18 hours.”

“What, really?” Dean asked, “That’s either very convenient or inconvenient as hell.”

Dean drummed his fingers on the steering wheel while Sam continued to scroll.

“It’s 27 hours from here to San Francisco…”

“Yeah, and considering that Bobby and the doc are on vacation in Fiji right now, I think we’re s.o.l. on the classic route.”

“Alright, so no Lovecraftian blood drive,” Dean grumbled.

“I was thinking though…about those special reapers,” Sam was approaching the idea gently, which immediately made Dean worry.

“What about them?”

“Just that…you do know someone who would be able to see one of those reapers.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Sammy, but Cas is MIA right now.”

“I didn’t mean…I was thinking about the _‘Eve’s children’_ side of it. If we want to see a monster reaper—”

“We need a monster to be reaped,” Dean finished Sam’s point for him.

“You told me that Benny—”

“No.” Dean interrupted again, but in firm opposition this time.

“Just hear me out.”

“No, Sam. You want me to use Benny as bait? The only person who’s never let me down and you want me to do what? Half-kill him and hope he’s not in too much pain to be our super-reaper translator?”

“So, what do we do then?” Sam turned in his seat as if seeing his brother more clearly would provide an answer, because Sam himself was currently at a loss for one. “


	2. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, how was this resolved? Well, in summary…

Dean recalled something that Cas mentioned before he embraced his role as angel tablet guardian. (The whole Cas and Crowley team-up isn’t something that Dean even thinks about at this point, after Godstiel, and thinking he’d lost his friend three or four times, and now with the trials. So forgive him for forgetting this little tidbit.)

After Eve’s dissection, Crowley of course attempted to keep the eggs that he’d found inside her. Castiel (always intending to double-cross Crowley anyway) allowed this and simply swooped by to take the eggs for himself after he’d declared himself the new God.

Although Cas was no hunter, he’d spent enough time with them that he of course had a storage locker. Dean and Sam drove to the storage locker, took one of Eve’s eggs, and somehow drew blood from that egg. They then stopped by to see Nancy Fitzgerald (still a virgin after all these years, she didn’t need sex to have a loving, fulfilling relationship with Victor Henriksen; they had a lifelong bond after surviving Lilith’s siege on the sheriff’s office).

This is how they enter Purgatory: the blood from Eve’s eggs and with the blood of a virgin.

Who are they even saving since Bobby is alive? That’s some other writer’s problem.

~

Later, on a safe-boat in Warsaw, Missouri, Crowley would continue his mental assault on Kevin. However, when he tried to tell Kevin that he’d killed Kevin’s mother, the lie was so transparent it was laughable. Linda Tran was there, checking up on Kevin after receiving a text from Sam about eggs or some such nonsense.

Meanwhile, although Dean wasn’t willing to use Benny as bait, he didn’t really think it would be putting him in harm’s way if he asked Benny to check up on Kevin for him. At least he remembered to give Kevin a head’s up that the vampire was a friend—that could’ve been awkward. Kevin was so absorbed in his translations that Linda and Benny found themselves spending most of their time on the safe-boat with each other. It only took them three minutes to dispose of the Crowley problem, so they had hours to discuss their love of food, motorcycles, and art.

Although they were absorbed in conversation with each other, they did soon realize that this environment was not good for Kevin. So they all packed up and took a vacation to visit Sarah Blake's new art gallery. They didn’t really have to rush though; Sarah and the gallery would be around for years, since there was no vengeful demon around to kill her. And if he did come back, well by that time he’d have other priorities, like helping Sam and Dean with the big bad monster of the year. Because let’s be realistic, they still don’t close the gates of hell. They broke so many mirrors all those years ago, they’ve still got like 592 years of bad luck to go.

**Author's Note:**

> The writer's block is real. What better way to start clawing my way past it than with a coldest hits prompt?  
> http://spncoldesthits.tumblr.com/post/161216626635


End file.
